Who am I ? The eternal Question . Have not figured it out fully yet. All you need to know about me is that I am a Middle Easterner, an Arab Woman - in my 40's and old enough to know better. I have no homeland per se...All the rest is icing on the cake. Copyrights reserved 2006-2016

January 30, 2011

I thought about being an Arab. What does it mean, what is an Arab, is there such a thing called an Arab, are there many Arabs or one type of an Arab, what is the common thread, the common denominator, is it an invented Identity, an acquired Identity or has it always been there, here? What is it composed of, what defines it ?

All these questions raced through my mind, all day long...

These were difficult questions. The difficulty laid in that I was, on some subconscious level, trying to find an answer within some "racial" parameter. Totally unsatisfactory, I may add.

Being an Arab is not about belonging to a race per se. Being an Arab is belonging to a LANGUAGE - the proverbial Mother Tongue. MOTHER tongue.

Language is the medium by which you express yourself in words, acquired words, learned words, but not only...Language shapes the perception and cognition of the world that surrounds you. When you start talking in Arabic, you feel and act in Arabic.

It is not just a question of an Arabic culture as some anthropologists like us to believe. Feeling and thinking in Arabic mean that there is a world view specific to the language, and that Reality can be fully only understood through that linguistic medium.

It is a well known fact that there are different world views - different concepts, inherited concepts, if you wish, by which one can interpret experience. I am simplifying to the maximum here.

There is the Semite and non Semite. Semite is not associated with Jewishness here. Jews are a tiny dead part of a Semitic culture/language.

I may not know what an Arab is, but I know what a Semite is - through the language.

A Sudanese, or a Mauritanian is not a Semite as such, but his language makes him so. Through that medium he acquires, incorporates the concepts associated with the language - Arabic.

When you INCORPORATE a language, you also incorporate everything else that comes with it...

I did not say when you SPEAK a language. I said when you incorporate a language.

So if being an Arab is not a race as such, but a Language, what are the implications of such an assertion ?

Let's get back to basics.

Take the EU as some example for comparison : A French can't understand an Italian, can't understand an Englishman, can't understand a Portuguese, can't understand a Russian, can't understand a Spaniard, can't understand...They have no common Language. They created a common language to understand one another - their common language is that of being a European i.e of belonging to the European race (whatever this racial profiling means). That is their language...or strive to have it as their common language.

An original Arabic speaker does not have this problem of creating, engineering a common language. It is already there. It is here. It is Arabic.

I go to Tunis, to Egypt, to Sudan, to Mauritania, to Morocco, to Algeria, to Libya, to Jordan, to Lebanon, to Syria, to Iraq, to the UAE, to Saudi Arabia, to Palestine...and I speak Arabic. They understand me and I understand them. I need no translator, no interpreter, no dictionary...

The language binds us. The language becomes our "race". And the language works on us, feeding us...so we share the same concepts, the same cognition, the same perception...we understand each one another.

Understand one another. Do not underestimate that.

We understand each other because we have the same references provided, offered by the language - the ARABIC language.

The Arabic Language (with a big L) is our Unifier.

The Language of the Koran, the word of Allah, God, is in Arabic.

Why did He chose this language, some language associated with a Bedouin desert, to reveal Himself ? Has anyone asked that pertinent question ?

After all, there are more Muslims in Indonesia than in the Arab World...the original text could have been in Indonesian for instance. But it was not. It was/is in Arabic.

All the Arab haters, when they want to learn Arabic, they turn to the Holy text as their prime reference. God takes you back to Him...always, even in Arabic.

When non Arabs embrace Islam, like the Iranians, the Kurds, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Indonesians, the Malays, the Turks, the Africans...and others...their ritual prayers are in Arabic, even though they may not understand the exact meaning. They are forced to say it in Arabic. Why is that do you think ? What is the message here ?

January 26, 2011

I've kept fairly silent on the latest wave of protests and "revolutions" that have suddenly gripped the Arab world. And that deliberately so.

I am in a waiting period, observing not only the impulsive reactions but more importantly WHO will fill the political power vacuum.

Before you jump and bite my head off, calling me all kinds of names, let me say that even though the masses - peoples grievances are valid, the political plot is not, not benign and far from it.

I am calling it a plot for several reasons.

First of all the timing. Have the Arab masses from Tunis, to Algeria, to Yemen, to Jordan, to Egypt (including the Palestinian leaks and their political implications) suddenly woke up to the fact that they are living under "corrupt dictatorships"? All at the same time ? Strange.

Secondly, I am wondering why this timing coincides with a full Hezbollah Iranian take over of Lebanon.

Thirdly, I am concerned, what are the alternatives presented, what is the agenda, is there one, what is the plan, and if people are clamoring for democracy as some leftist activists are claiming, who will institutionalize the democratic process ?

So far I have seen no real indicators for more open democratic societies in the making. Leaving aside my own allergy to the word "democracy" and its consequences as in Iraq, so far I have seen nothing but an "Islamist" alternative presenting itself as some savior.

Not that I have anything against Islam, quite the contrary. However, I am very wary of these Islamic parties. I am wary of the Tunisian Islamists who try to re-assure us they are not Khomeinis, I am very wary of Hamas and its close ties to Iran, I am very wary of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who is in bed with Iran, and needless to say I am excessively concerned regarding the Lebanese situation and the Iranian Hezbollah take over.

Some claim this wave of protests is a demand for Freedom (another dreaded word in my dictionary as per the Iraqi lesson), this is inaccurate.

At the grass root level, be it in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan the demands were mainly economic in nature and have to do with rising costs of living, inflation, low salaries, lack of social security, unemployment...i.e an economic insecurity that can be inscribed in the general global economic crisis. Basically, they are protests for Bread.

There is no doubt that Arab governments have contributed through their own corruption, to this state of affairs. One cannot deny that. However, I don't think at the grass root level, the main demands were demands for more democracy and doing away with autocracy. More like doing away with kleptomania, yes.

That is not to say that Arab people don't have aspirations for "democracy", but it is to say that radical changes that are to take place or are taking place cannot be divorced from the grander geopolitical context, in the aftermath and with particular reference to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

My fourth point is another observation that is sticking out like a sore thumb. My question is how come there are no protests in "democratic" Iraq where over 50% of the population is unemployed and how come all is quiet on the Syrian front ? Don't they have inflation in Syria ?

Of course, both Iraq and Syria are totally in the Iranian camp today. The countries where protests are taking place are in the so-called pro-Israel, pro-US satellites.

Need I remind that US occupied Iraq is run by Iran and its Shiite parties and militias ?!

In this sea of political instability who holds the cards ? Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia (abdicated in Lebanon) or Iran ?

The answer is of course Iran and to a much lesser extent Turkey who in my opinion got on a tad too late on the "anti-Zionist" bandwagon, due to well known reasons : a) its past aspirations to join the EU which it gave up by now and b) to NATO's presence on its soil.

The other thing that is missing from the big picture is Israel. I would have assumed that Israel would be terribly worried by now, now that the Palestinian papers are out, now that all those pro-Israel US lackeys are being shaken by democracy. I see no Israeli worry and that worries me.

Iran is already praising the "revolutions" in the Arab world and that worries me even more, for I have seen what the Iranian "revolution" has done to Iraq in collaboration with the Americans.

The expected, immediate results are obvious to me, Iran has consolidated its regional position/influence even more.

On another note but very much related, and still on the subject of "democracy".

When the Shah regime fell, I heard the same excitement - namely that the Tyrant is gone and that the winds of change, of freedom were sweeping Iran...I let the Iranians respond to that today.

The same thing when Saddam Hussein's regime fell thanks to American Imperialism and to Zionism, people applauded the end of "Tyranny". I let the Iraqis tell you all about real Tyranny today, a tyranny of an Iranian American flavor.

I realize it is too soon to pronounce myself on Tunisia and Egypt and even on the Palestinian Authority's fate in the West bank, but...

January 24, 2011

This has truly become unbearable, and it's been going on for over 4 years with no respite.

Some readers, whether here or on Twitter, people I don't know and have no contact with, are always ready to pounce like a bunch of wild hyenas at the slightest word, sentence, I utter.

The last in line are a couple of females, who sent me emails calling me dirty, filthy, messy, etc...

In the not so distant past, it was males who would compose mails with death and rape threats, or just plain insults or a mix of both.

On Twitter, it's the same story.

I write addressing no one person in particular. Yet, I have been the recipient of the most vile forms of harassment and it is not stopping. I wonder if any other blogger has gone through the same crap I go through daily.

Short of closing everything down, which is probably what these scum are really hoping for, I don't know what to do anymore.

I block email addresses, cancel, delete to no avail.

Fucking psychotic men and women, online psychopaths, trolls and severely deranged people must be stopped.

January 23, 2011

Glad to announce that I was able to retrieve my old username back that was hijacked a few weeks ago, thanks to the help of a friend who cared enough about the issue and did not wish to see my name Layla Anwar and that of Iraq associated with some cheap American porn site. One cannot get used to American cheapness.

So this is a public Thank You note to this person.

You may now follow me on Twitter - if you wish - for this is where I also print some of my thoughts, in a condensed form.

My username on Twitter is laylaanwar. And please don't harass me with friends request on Facebook, I don't use it.

January 14, 2011

Being a "typical" woman, I guess I'd qualify my current state as "emotional".

For the past 48 hours, I have been unable to stop the replay of that conversation...maybe it was the tone and manner in which the news were delivered to me, it could have been an expression, a look in the eyes, a pause after a sentence...or maybe just the story...a story in a context, a peculiar context...

I write and I wonder will anyone understand me ? How to put in sentences the expression, the look in the eyes, the silent pause full of unspoken words ?

She's part of my family, of my bloodline, of my genetic pool, of my ancestral lineage, we grew up together, we played, fought, celebrated, dreamed, sang and danced together...

Where is she now, in which world, in which parallel universe ? She believed in the imaginary realm of fairies, angels, jinns and invisible spirits, so did I...I was lucky, she was not.

They called her to their palaces and fortresses. Will I ever be able to reach her again, like in the good old days, when dreams, fantasies and imaginations were benevolent ? When it was safe to be, knowing your psyche will find the grounds again, that familiar place where you can fall back onto, that secure garden where it was okay to wander and vagabond...

- Layla I need to talk to you, sit down...
- Allahoma ij'alu khair, I said (may God bring good news)
- your uncle just called, asking me to call your aunt...
- is that some chain of command ? protecting myself sardonically..
- it's about S. She's very unwell.
- how unwell ?
- your aunt said that she lost much weight lately, she stopped eating, she lives on a glass of water a day, and...
- and what ?!
- she sees masked men barging in the night, killing her and the rest of the family...it's been happening in their neighborhood, where people are slaugthered in the middle of the night in their homes...she stopped sleeping. When your aunt asks her to come and eat, she says she was already fed by Zahra (who passed away 20 years ago), she says that Zahra will protect her from the armed men in black masks. When they wanted to take her to a doctor, she said she was already examined, AbdelRahman (who passed away 15 years ago) already took her in a cart because there is no fuel. Your aunt says she wants to die, that she can't take it anymore, that she can't see her child suffer that way...she added that she's wearing 4 layers of clothes, because the nights are bitterly chilly and there are water cuts, electricity cuts, fuel cuts while they are filling their pockets...she says she's a prisoner in her home, she fears daily what will happen to them, a car bomb, a militia, a corrupt police force, a silencer gun, a kidnapping, an abduction, a disappearance...

A disappearance...that word stuck to my head. Is that not what S.did ? She disappeared from the reality of the Occupation, in her own way, by her own methods, where no American soldier, no security contractor, no Shiite party, no militia, no masked man, can ever find her again.

The call for the Sunset prayers just made it through, in time...a few rays of a cold sun, fell on the kitchen table...a silence hovered between us, punctuated with swallowed tears, tears gushing on the inside, flooding our being, a being shattered with years of brutality and violence, with untold stories of grief, separation, loss...with lost, missing faces buried in our memories like coffins, with sounds of guns, bombs, mortars mixed with melodies from the past, with destruction, loss of identity, loss of anchors, loss of references, loss of a vision for the future, an unknown future that promises more of the same...

The silence was pregnant with all of that...the faces composed, hardened with the secret thought --- we need to keep it together, we must keep it together, we have no option but to keep it together....because we have no familiar grounds to fall back onto, because we have no garden to give us space for dreaming, because our alternatives are either psychosis or death.

January 9, 2011

I amused myself googling my own name Layla Anwar. After all why not, since names get stolen, might as well know where they end up.

I fell on this link . I clicked on it, and what do I find being marketed under my name - 2 naked porn prostitutes dressed as Santa being done over by Papa Santa. Their heads covered in red garments and their breasts and genitals exposed to the world. Their bodies contorted so their orifices are made visible, so that the god that rules what's between your thighs can have his final say. That god that pulls at your strings like paper dolls, like puppets and controls your inner being. That pagan god around which a billion dollar industry is generated just to cater for your 3 seconds masturbatory orgasm, giving you illusions of potency, strength, virility and femininity.

I looked at this picture for a while, and for me it summarized everything about your decadence.

Santa is celebrated in the Western tradition as some emblem symbol of abundance, when even though you are an adult, you still believe deep down that maybe this Santa, this Christmas, will deliver your secret desires.

Your secret desires are usually quite banal. They revolve around sex and money, the two overwhelming forces that drive your psyche. For you they represent the essence of Life.

Freud understood that, this is how he was able to market himself, and you turned him into an icon, so you can persevere in your godlessness.

It is of no coincidence that my name is associated with the above. Was not Iraq the secret object of your unbridled lust for both ?

Did you not also "fuck" us in the name of that same Santa of "abundance and prosperity", where our heads were covered in sand bags and torn veils and our lower bodies exposed to your Freedom thrusts ? All in the name of that same ethos that rules you like a tyrannical master, and has enslaved your minds to the point of rendering you irremediably blind ? I think so.

Your are doomed, you have doomed yourselves with your own hands. No Santa will save you. Mark my words.

January 7, 2011

Am on a roll, might as well get to the bottom of it...I can always crash later.

In my post no.2, I spoke of agendas, cleansing, i.e erasing...

This is totally normal. You can't impose a new culture if you don't erase the previous one.

To erase a previous one, you need to obliterate anything that held it together. That seems so evident to me. Like common sense. No ?

Was it secularism that held it together ? Destroy that. Was it a person, an intelligentsia ?Cleanse that. Was it a multi diverse culture ? Reduce it to quantifiable entities. Was it a state apparatus and a leadership ? Dismantle it. Was it a sense of belonging to a history ? Erase it and re-write the curriculum (this is actually happening in school curriculums).

What are we to conclude from 8 years of the most hideous, brutal, savage destruction ?

Was it because of Saddam Hussein ? Was it because of WMDs ? Was it because of Al-Qaeda that never existed in Iraq before the Americans occupied us ?

Surely any remotely intelligent person can answer these questions...it is so obvious.

What was the aim of 13 years of embargo and the occupation ? Come on show me your IQ's and don't you dare mention the word oil. Take into account all what I've said before.

Today there are over 13 officially acknowledged intelligence services belonging to foreign countries. Thirteen is an underestimate, some say up to 20 spying agencies in Iraq, armed to the teeth.

During Saddam Hussein's era, there was zero agency...except for the dirty Western NGO's who came for "humanitarian" reasons...to alleviate the "suffering of Iraqis". And the so called UN inspectors who were for the most part working for the CIA. FACT.

Why am I telling you all of this ?

Because am trying to show you in summary form, how to invade and occupy a country...

It's like a thousand daggers fell upon us in 2003...no one can understand that, except an Iraqi.

In parallel, a whole media warfare was waged...Wikileaks did a good job exposing some of it, the embedded journalism concept played a crucial role in how the occupation was sold to the herd...because herd you are.

The weapons, the artillery, the deaths are a natural outcome of this war that started first in your minds.

I am writing this for myself...not for the reader. I have come to learn that the so-called reader does not effect any difference whatsoever. Hence whether s/he understands or not, does not make the slightest difference...

Against this background of "deprivation" , came an occupation with an agenda. The agenda of sect, ethnicities, religion etc...

The grounds were prepared in the early 90's. Iran with its so called Islamic Revolution had already one foot in Iraq, capitalizing on the Shiite population.

Iran was only able to fully impose itself as a cultural ideology (forget politics for the moment) in 2003 after the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Before that date, it had some influence through its Shiite clerics in Najaf and Kerbala, but that influence was limited.

The American invasion and occupation of Iraq paved the way for the erasure of the Iraqi identity coupled with the strong Iranian hallmark that accompanied this occupation.

People, laypersons refuse to acknowledge that aspect of the occupation, yet we Iraqis are so aware of it, hence our total bewilderment when we are disbelieved in our own experience of what the American occupation is all about.

Political Shiism, and its parties made headways in Iraq, (forget the North for the moment where Israelis were arming and training the Kurds).

During the years 2004 to 2009, and till this day, an ethnic cleansing has been taking place...

A cultural and ethnic cleansing of anything Iraqi.

It started in waves, batches of cleansing...first there was the ex Iraqi army officers, then the Scientists, then the Academics, then the teachers, then the Doctors and nurses, then the Sunnis then the other minorities and now the time has come for the Christians of Iraq...

These are waves of cultural and ethnic cleansing...coupled with the burning and destruction of the Iraqi national heritage such as libraries, archives, antiquities, history...

Am trying to simplify it as much as I can...am trying to simplify the unthinkable in a few lines....

The American occupation encouraged the ethnic and cultural cleansing of Iraq and of its so called minorities. It did so by using Shiite parties and militias and did its own share in enhancing, exacerbating the sectarian divide that flared up post 2003, thanks to Iranian hands.

An eagle's view shows that the aim was to erase any Arab identity to this country..and turn it into a purely Shiite theocracy affiliated to Iran and some sort of Kurdish (Israeli) free zone in the North.

I ask anyone, whomsoever reads this, to keep these details in mind. I will not repeat the American agenda no more. I have been doing that for over 5 years now. And am getting frankly tired of the repetition to thick obstinate brains...even a brick wall would have understood by now.

January 5, 2011

I was not sure how to title this post, for it is a fairly complex subject that needs to take into account several factors. I will start easy and simple and see where that will take me...

Echoes I hear from Baghdad and I will refer mainly to Baghdad as the center - the eye of the storm, so to speak, and from my observation of Iraqi refugee youth outside of Iraq, either those whose have already emigrated - been placed in another country or are still caught in a limbo, in some psychological no man's land, unable to move back or move forward...

The age group I shall focus on is the 15-25 years old or so. Bear in mind this is not an in depth sociological study nor is it meant to be. It is more like a mix of observations, experience and listening to people.

But before I do, I need to rewind back in time a little, first to the sanctions years then to the 2003 U.S occupation.

These young men and women were born during the sanction years or just a little before. The bulk of their growing up life experience in Iraq was marked by the first Gulf War and the subsequent sanctions years that lasted 13 years, in other words years perceived as years of "deprivation".

If you have not lived the sanctions you would not know what am talking about. The only image that comes to mind, a close enough picture - is one huge prison with transparent windows, where you are allowed to watch the outside the world but never participate in it.

The sanctions years were crucial in preparing the whole psychological atmosphere for what was to come later - the brutal destruction of Iraqi culture and society.

Yet despite these draconian sanctions that left the majority of Iraqis in a state of total helplessness, the societal fabric even though pulled at the seams, had not cracked open yet, nor did it disintegrate like in the subsequent post 2003 years.

It remained a deeply secular society in its intra sect /intra ethnic dealings. Religion played a role ,sure, but remained confined to the personal and overall cultural realm. After all, Iraq is an Arab country and Islamic contributions to the world came forth from the Abbassid period, where Baghdad was one of the most important centers of learning and contributions to world civilization. But Religion, never NEVER occupied the center stage as it has done post 2003.

A parenthesis here - Every time I attempt to write an overall picture of the Iraq of before and after, I need to take a break, a choking feeling grips me in my throat and the rage rises again, like some lava from a volcano unwilling to die down.

That is why, when I hear shits of Westerners talk of the Iraq of before and after, in particular the garbage Americans the so called experts who made a fortune dissecting us like insects, in occupied Iraq, I honestly want to go for their jugular, literally... These are opportunistic bastards who came late on the scene and are still aiming for a best seller. They sicken me, my contempt for them sickens me...

That is why I refuse, categorically to read ANYTHING, any analysis of the War on Iraq by an American - apart from an occasional article that never fails to make me cringe with disgust.

January 3, 2011

I've had a few but great teachers...but one teacher that never abdicated is Iraq.

She has been my biggest teacher and to Her am indebted for ever...Through her I learned so much, through her pain, her suffering, her sacrifices, her steadfastness, her dignity, even through her treachery...I learned.

She is my Master. She gives sweet and sour fruits...she made me taste the honey and the bitter arsenic...

She promised the Gods to sacrifice herself for Truth, so it can be revealed to the end of Times...

January 1, 2011

Someone define that fucking word to me. Because after 7 years of liberation, I still don't get it.

What does democracy mean ?

The grocer next door is selling toilet paper called Freedom and Democracy. Bought a roll in hard currency....he said to me - only dollars will do.

I found the paper too hard on my ass...

Went back to him, complaining, said to him - this paper is too hard on my soft skin. He told me the price was worth paying...

He had memorized the Madeleine Albright democrat cunt a few years prior...who stated when over half a million soft skins of Iraqi babes went blank with death, that American democratic cunt said - she said - the price was worth it

What does your fucking word - your fucking democracy - mean ? apart from some sore ass caught in some freedom dungeon...apart from a mass grave for children.

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You may use, publish, distribute, link to...my articles provided that you respect Copyrights. My name and that of THIS blog must be mentioned at all times. You have already pillaged, plundered and stolen my country. I will not allow you to steal the little I have left-- my corner of cyberspace.

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You have just landed on a politically incorrect blog which contains "offensive" material and language. A blog where I don't mince my words, nor beautify them. Bottom line, I don't give a damn about your sensitivities nor your twisted, contorted, hypocritical faces. You see, you have skinned us alive, we have no skin left. So take it, the way you dealt it -- Raw.